Cycling in, and out of, the family story Changing transport, and work, options

As a cyclist, and sometime cycle campaigner and rides organiser,  I was delighted to be contacted out of the blue (via this site) about family bike shop connections. Second cousin (once removed) Ronnie Myhill used to have such a shop in Carlisle, before switching to grocery – I’d already spotted his dad Sidney was a cycle agent at one point.

Ronnie was definitely involved with bicycles in 1953, and the grocery store existed by 1969, per phone directories on Ancestry.

Our correspondent relayed an extract from a postcard, mentioning fitting a Cyclemaster Power Unit in 1953. A number of web pages on such contraptions – complete powered rear wheels – appear on a quick Google, including a UK based “online museum” https://cyclemaster.wordpress.com/. Plenty of images too. We had an old bicycle in the garage when I was growing up, fitted with a different type of  small add-on petrol engine, before mopeds came in to use I guess.

It would be interesting to know at what point Ronnie gave up on cogs and brakes for coffee and biscuits.

Notes

Connected articles: Making a Case for the Myhills shows that Ronnie is unlikely to have any living descendants. I’d be very happy to be proved wrong.